Dec 29, 2020
Coppelius’s Toyshop is one of the busiest stores in New York during the Christmas season. With life-sized toy soldiers on either side of the entrance and characters straight out of fairy tales roaming the aisles filled with toys, it’s a paradise for kids of all ages. It’s not a paradise, however, for Connie...
Dec 15, 2020
The Christmas ghost story was a staple of winter festivities in Victorian and Edwardian England, so we thought we’d discuss one of the most famous ones: Elizabeth Gaskell’s “The Old Nurse’s Story.” The story is told in first person. The nurse, now an older woman, is speaking to a little girl about when her
Dec 1, 2020
On Christmas Eve, while his family is sharing ghost stories around the fireplace, Arthur Kipps remembers his own horrible encounter with a haunting. Kipps, when he was a young and eager lawyer, was sent to Eel Marsh house to sort through the papers of the recently deceased widow, Mrs. Drablow. It should be a rather easy...
Nov 17, 2020
Octavia Butler’s “Bloodchild” is a coming-of-age story, featuring Gan, a young man living on a faraway planet--which at some point in the distant past was colonized by humans. The planet is home to a sentient giant worm-like people. When the humans first arrived, they tried to kill the worms. The worms, in turn,...
Nov 3, 2020
Catherine House is a kind of utopia. The graduates of the prestigious school go on to be the world’s top doctors, lawyers, and politicians. Basically, the kind of people who run the world have come from Catherine House. Even better, tuition is completely free. Students at Catherine House have every need provided for...